Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion…or should it?

It depends on who you ask…

At 10am, Samantha talks about the political AND religious leanings of GOP superstars Michelle Bachmann and Rick Perry. Does religion have a place in government? Does Michelle Bachmann’s history of fundamentalist Christian beliefs cloud her judgement and make her too extreme for mainstream America?

And…

At 10:30am, Samantha welcomes Christian fundamentalist blogger, Jim Fletcher, to the show. The two will discuss modern, fundamentalist Christianity.

After the show, Executive Producer Aaron Donchen chastised Samantha for talking over the guest and regretted our ‘piling on’ in response to him graciously sharing his time with us. Well, he was right and we think we can do better.

In the meantime, Brian noted that Samantha dodged the question: ”WHY would they have the opening day of the Ground Zero mosque ON 9/11 ?!?” Fair enough. The reason was because Samantha had not heard that this had happened and therefore could not speculate. She wishes she had said so on the air.

In any case, it turns out that this is unfounded according to the nonpartisan FactCheck.org:

Organizers say no. As best we can determine, the idea that the cultural center and mosque would open that day is unfounded speculation. [emphasis mine]. Project organizers say that no official date has been set for the opening of the proposed center. Imam Rauf told Newsday back in May that it could take anywhere from 18 months to three years to raise the money to complete the project, and added that the center wouldn’t open on the anniversary of Sept. 11. Project organizers took to the social networking site Twitter as recently as Aug. 20 to knock down the claim, saying: “Reports that we will open on 9/11 or begin construction on 9/11 are false and inflammatory. Our timeline to build is 18 – 38 months.”

The idea that the center and mosque would open on Sept. 11, 2011 — the 10-year anniversary of the terrorist attacks in 2001 — has been bandied about on blogs and discussion boards. The American Freedom Defense Initiative sponsored advertisements that may have also contributed to that thought. The initiative’s ads appeared on New York City buses and asked, “Why There?,” with an image of a plane flying into a burning World Trade Center, next to a rendering of the proposed building with the words “September 11, 2011, WTC Mega Mosque.”

Well, I guess we spent two hours talking about the debt ceiling, how Washington works, whether businesses make decisions solely based on tax rates (NOT!), who raised taxes the most, and how we can get away from this polarized political environment. Whew! What a great time.